Giving the New and Improved! Ask.com a promotional kick, Hanft Raboy & Partners personified the nagging questions that sit fussing in the back of our heads -- or, in this case, on our shoulders.

Watch as an elephantine nag weighs down an inquisitive 8th-grade boy. Here, a cop contemplates where to meet cool girls. And in our favourite spot, a pregnant woman wonders, "Can I eat eggs, clams and crab legs?" -- through an elderly Indian man.

Each question-asker accentuates its host's musings in a slightly tone-deaf way, imbuing the spots with quirky charm. And the tagline ensures we know exactly what each shoulder-bound burden represents: "Get the best answers to all your nagging questions."

Here's "Life Story," a spot by IBD Brands for the Panasonic Lumix camera. It's narrated by a guy trying to capture meaningful moments of his life -- except the most crucial factor (his face) keeps getting cut out. Hence the need for a Lumix, which sports a wide-angle lens.

They convey her into the air before she alights angelically upon some faceless dude, strokes his shoulder and croons, "I've never felt so close to my man."

Cheesy, so cheesy, and there doesn't appear to be any connection with the fabric and the love interest at all. Did he precipitate the wind dance? Or did fine fabric save their fraying relationship? One commenter was all, "I was hoping the fabric was connected to his suit as workers were still stitching it."

That would've been fun to watch. This rang more like a parody for an early-'90s perfume ad: it felt loaded with banal effects (hot actress, out-of-body experience, a thin stab at love) but lacked sublimity.

Sometimes driving alone and all the mind wandering that comes with it can be a therapeutic experience. Other times it can just suck, be boring or make you want to fall asleep. Driver Assist Connect, a gadget that projects a holographic image to the passenger seat of your car aims to keep you company, keep you awake and, in your absence, help prevent people from stealing your car.

The product could come in handy when driving to work alone allowing one to scoot down the less jammed, two-per-vehicle express lane. It could also cause problems when inadvertently switched on while driving past one's significant other. Or, conversely, it could aid in the creation of jealousy, an occasional but much-needed card in the relationship game.

The ads themselves are of the cheesy infomercial variety variety; poorly acted, oddly scripted and produced with the finesse of a sledgehammer.

What would happen if a Thickburger jumped into a cold swimming pool? "Shrinkage" -- one ad among many for Hardee's Little Thickburger. Despite its focus on (small) size, (wide) breadth and general meatiness, it is radically devoid of gigantic titty jokes or other innuendos.

Each spot sports its own overly cute Thickburger-vs-Little-Thickburger comparison and ends with the same glib line: "It's a Thickburger, but little."

If Daria ever went into advertising, a slogan like that would've been her magnum opus.

- A handful of rich-ass celebrities use reverse psychology to cajole MySpace users into voting. What, does Jennifer Aniston not do it for you? Maybe Leonardo DiCaprio's poverty-ridden excuse for a blog will.

- The wife of David Warthen, founder of Ask.com, is facing tax evasion charges on money she made while working as a hooker to pay for law school.

So...does strapping a midget...oh, damn, that's not the right word...a little person to the front of a man who then, with the help of the little person, hurls a shot which beats a 1973 record make the man one and and a half times the man he already is? According to Solo Strong beer, the answer is yes.

All of this raises a very important question; Does Solo Strong beer thing midgets, sorry, little people are half as good as "regular" people? Apparently so since advertising is, as we all know, the bastion of truth and enlightened thought, right?